Electronics - Elettronica

Electronic activity at DIEI can be gathered in 4 main fields:

Sensors, Circuits & Systems - This activity, mostly in the area of health monitoring, focuses on the design and test of CMOS Active Pixel Sensors integrated in VLSI sub-micrometer and vertical scale (3D-IC) technologies, on the development of a multi-channel analog front end for brain-computer interfaces (BCI), on a Lab-on-Chip (LoC) for viral infection diagnosis as well ason a real time dosimeter for Interventional Radiology.

Devices and technology - Activities are devoted to physical modeling and numerical analysis of semiconductor devices, to the study of thermal properties of micro electro mechanical systems and to the Silicon on Diamond (SoD) technology for radiation sensor and biomedical applications.

High Frequency - Activities in this branch are about RFID systems, RF Integrated circuits (RFIC), Front End design for telecommunication, telemetry and radiometers, System in Package (SiP) and interconnections. Most recently, specific attention has been devoted to solutions for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

A dedicated pixel simulation and verification environment is currently under development for the performance analysis and optimization of alternative pixel readout chip architectures for next generation high energy physics experiments. Automated verification functions will be part of such a framework to enable extensive simulations of large sets of pixel hits and triggers to be performed in an automated fashion for global architecture evaluations and for all incremental extensions and refinements of a final design.

The RAPID (Real Time Active Pixel Dosimetry) project is focused on radiation protection in Interventional Radiology. During all their professional activities, interventional radiologists and staff members are frequently exposed to protracted and fractionated low doses of ionizing radiation. In order to comply with international guidelines on radiation protection, exposure to ionizing radiation also restricts the number of procedures that operators can periodically undertake. It is therefore necessary to minimize individual exposure to X-rays during radiological procedures through an on line monitoring of absorbed dose.

The 3-year project, started on February 2013, aims at fabricating a Lab-on-Chip system that integrates in a single device all the functional modules needed for the rapid and reliable execution of complete bio-analytical protocols, from sample preparation to parallel detection of multiple analytes, without the need for pre-analytical sample treatments and bulky external instrumentation to detect the analytical signal and to actuate the microfluidics.